Experts Alarmed as Jellyfish Spawn in Freshwater Lakes

As the world’s oceans undergo a dramatic rise in temperature, jellyfish blooms have become a regular occurrence, threatening both beachgoing tourists and coastal infrastructure around the world.

But experts are also scrambling to explain a rise in reporting of jellyfish blooms in one of the last places anyone would expect: the freshwater lakes of middle America.

In the dog days of summer this year, local news outlets began reporting on sightings of rare freshwater jellyfish drifting in all manner of freshwater sources: from the Midwestern waters of Lake Erie to ornamental ponds of northwest Arkansas to the oxbow lakes of Oklahoma.

Technically known as Craspedacusta sowerbii, or “peach blossom jellyfish,” the freshwater critters measure in at about the size of a penny. Sporting transluce